Thursday, December 14, 2006

It's been quite a busy year for me, and I haven't had much of a chance to take any long term breaks, so starting next week, I'll be travelling around the US similarly to what I had done last year. Next week, I'll be heading out to Sin City where I'll meet up with some friends from Cornell. Since I sort of recently took a trip out to Vegas, I'll be sort of be a tour guide. Vegas has so many different things to see, and it's one of those places where I tell everyone that they should visit at least once in their lifetime because frankly, there's no place in the world that's like it. We also got some tickets to go see Mystère, which'll be my 2nd Cirque du Soleil show, and if it's anything like "O", I'll leave the show a happy panda :) In addition to Vegas, we'll be heading out to Death Valley to do some sightseeing since Orca loves to take pictures. I'm hoping if I hit up the poker tables again, my play will be better this 2nd time around at Vegas after losing $100 in 30 minutes the last time I played -_-

After Vegas, it's back home to PA for the rest of December, but I'll probably be either in PA, NJ, or NY depending on what's going on. However, the Kung family will make their annual trip to NYC in search of last minute deals on cell phone plans. The Motorola K1 has been the only phone out that has caught my eye so far, but if the Motorola MOTOFONE F3 somehow manages to get released between now and then, I might jump on getting that one too. I've also had some thoughts about getting the Samsung Blackjack, but after reading about its semi-mediocre battery life and various reports about what data plan to get, I might stick with just a regular phone. Although, the capability to have internet data at hand nearly all the time is a cool thought :)

For new years eve till the new year and onward, I'll be making my (what seems like) annual trip down to Houston to meet up with Velius, but this time, members from team =VGI= (and others) will also be there! So if you happen to be around Houston around New Years, there'll be a party at Velius' house :)

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Sunday, September 3, 2006

Check out the Google Image labeler and see how many google points (which don't mean anything, but hey, Google tries to make it meaningful :P) you can get with some random person trying to label images.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

My friend Tochi and I have been playing The Crims for the past month or so, and Tochi got the brilliant idea of creating an extension to the game. His extension calculates your criminal's power for robberies so you know which ones your criminal is capable for, and it determines how many upgrades your criminal can buy with its cash money when you visit the hospital. Right now it's still a work in progress, but if you ever decide to play The Crims, drop by Tochi's Hut and pick up his custom extension :)

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Monday, June 5, 2006

It's been a while since I've had a gadget review, but I got these Shure E2c headphones about a week ago, and after breaking them in a bit over the week, I think I can give my opinion about them.

I've been looking to get noise canceling headphones ever since using David's JVC HANC100's. The JVC headphones has some electronics inside of them that generate white noise (powered by a single AAA battery) to block out the external noise outside of the headphones, which worked well for low frequency noise such as a noisy computer fan, and I'm guessing they would work just as well to drown out those mundane tones of an airline flight. The other nifty thing about these headphones is the retractable cord, which makes it convenient to use even if you don't have any sort of music source to plug into. However, the downside of these headphones is its bulkiness, so if you wanted to jog or exercise with these headphones, you're probably better off looking elsewhere. Also, for whatever reason, I was leaning more towards some sort of earbud headphone.

So after sifting through reviews at Amazon, I finally settled on getting the Shure E2c, which were rated pretty highly and pretty reasonably priced (note: For whatever reason, the price of these headphones fluxuate quite a lot, and I managed to snag these for $65 the day I bought them, so your purchase price may vary :P). Instead of using white noise to block out external sound, Shure takes another approach by making the headphones seal in your ear like earplugs. The headphones come with 3 set of earplugs (foam, silicon, and rubber) in 3 different sizes, giving you 9 standard combinations to try or you can mix and match the earplugs. I initially tried the medium-sized silicon earplugs, but I found them to be too hard to wear comfortably, so I switched to the medium-sized rubber earplugs, and I've been a happy panda ever since. Without any music playing, you feel like you're wearing standard earplugs, but once the music starts, your ear pretty much sifts out any background noise and concentrates on the music. I could have the dishwasher running and David watching a DVD at a normal volume next door on our 5.1 sound system and not get disturbed as I worked in my room. In fact, I would say it's probably dangerous to run outside by yourself with these on because you probably wouldn't be able to sense any "dangerous" sounds fast enough to react. In terms of sound quality, these phones provide a very clear and consistent sound, and with the noise-cancellation, you probably will hear parts of your music that you never heard before! Those who are into bass might find these headphone underwhelming, but you'd probably be looking for a different type of headphone altogether if you wanted to listen to bass all the time.

Anyways, if you're looking for a good set of earbuds that can isolate your ears from the rest of the world while you listen to your music, definitely give these a look!

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

I know I haven't been really good at updating this blog with life events (hence, the numerous spamming links with random stuff :P), so I figured it's time to take a step away from research (as a 460 meg file is being downloaded to my laptop :P) and do some real blogging for a bit. As you can probably realize, research has been busy as of late, but progress has been coming slowly but surely, and I got a paper accepted to the IEEE AP-S conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico this year, so I'll be flying down there in July to do a presentation on my anisotropic time-domain hybrid method. I've never been to New Mexico, so hopefully I'll be able to do some sightseeing as well.

In friends' news, my friend Yan got married last weekend to his fiancee Lisa. The wedding was up in Massachusetts, so David and I and another friend took a road trip up there. They had more of a traditional asian wedding ceremony, but since Lisa is vietnamese and Yan is chinese, I got to see two different asian wedding ceremonies in one day. After the ceremonies, they got some pictures taken at Phillips Academy, which served as a nice background drop with its open areas of grass. After the pictures, it was off to the wedding reception at Jin Cuisine, which is probably the biggest Chinese restaurant I've ever seen, for a 10 course meal, which included plenty of duck and seafood :) Man...you know you're getting old when you're seeing your friends get married :P But I'm happy for both of them. They've had some tough times in the past, but they managed to put their differences aside and be together for the rest of their lives.

Yan also got a pretty interesting wedding band, consisting of a titanium ring gripping a small diamond. Apparently, the ring is engineered so well that you'd have to use some sort of machinery to get the diamond out. For the trip, I drove about 1.8k miles and about 34 hours of driving over a 3 day period, but hey, I'm dedicated to my friends :)

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

To Orca, Velius, Kabitzin, and all others who have paid for the That Day DVD, the DVD will be delayed for another week :( The DVDs are being burned in Dayton, and my friend Jason said he'd head back this weekend to pick them up, so hopefully I will have them in my hands next week. Sorry for the delay :(

For those who haven't ordered, we're selling them for $5, so if you want your own DVD, drop me a line in the comments or send me some mail, and we can talk about it.

Thursday, April 6, 2006

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Even though the intro to this video is from Bleach, keep watching and you'll eventually see the nifty rube golberg machines back to back. Anyone know what they say at the end when the machine finishes?

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I came back from my spring break 2 weeks ago, and I've been busting my butt trying to catch up on research. But it was sure fun going down to Florida and enjoy the 80 degree weather :) So here're some pics for you guys and girls to take a look. If I get the chance, I'll try to reorganize the Kennedy Space center pics so that the plaques of certain rockets will preceed the rockets themselves.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

After burning the midnight oil over the weekend, David and I managed to compile and finalize the That Day DVD. It was quite a learning experience to use Adobe Premiere to edit the clips from David's camcorder and use Adobe Encore to put together the DVD menus and such, but after getting past the initial learning curve, it was hell of a lot of fun putting everything together :) David and I were so giddy like kids when we saw the credits we put goether roll across at the end of the show and the names of each actor and actress show up on the cast interviews :D Of course, there's an interview of me on the DVD since I was the assistant director, but I think I look like a complete dork on it and probably should have spoken a lot louder, but hey, I'm sure a lot of people'll get a laugh out of it :P I've also learned that my voice sounds a lot different than I think it sounds...

For those who'd like a DVD, we're selling them for $5, and the proceeds are going to the Scarlet Mask Society, so if you want to get a DVD, drop me an email and I'll see if I can get one to you!

Friday, March 10, 2006

As David and I put together the DVD for the show, I've had the chance to see how I look and react in some of the "behind the scenes" footage that David took of one of our dress rehersals. For some reason, I've noticed that my face looks incredibly "flat", and the second thing I notice is that my voice sounds a lot different than how I think it is. The other interesting fact is that my eyelids seem to fold into my eyes instead of outwards, as you can see here. Guess it must be an asian thing...

Monday, March 6, 2006

Despite the fact that we had access to the stage on opening night, the cast and crew came through and "That Day" was a success both this past Friday and Saturday night! Over 250 people showed up over the 2 days to watch the show, and about $200 in donations to the Scarlet Mask Society was collected! I wasn't so much worried about the cast since every single one of them pretty much had their role nailed down, but I was worried about the spotlight and lighting issues since I had to manage the stage lights backstage while the spotlight and sound were being taken care off behind the audience in the auditorium. Fortunately, we designed a very good cue sheet to make things run smoothly. The other big issue finding a efficient method of getting 20 cast members on and off stage since the room backstage was basically the size of a closet, and it only led to the stairwells in the Ohio Union, but several members of the cast took one of the cue sheets and took responsibility for getting the right people backstage, which made things SO much easier since all I had to worry about now was managing the lights. Despite all the madness, I'm going to miss those Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday practices watching the cast members do what they do best. Even though it was a lot of work, I had a lot of fun directing, script editing, visualizing, and working behind the scenes backstage.

To Ann, Barbie, Doug, Janice, John, Kate, Katerina, Kim, Kristen, Lamarkus, Laura, Louise, Matt, Mike, Pamela, Shannon, Srivathsan, Tracey, Vincent, and Zeb: Thanks for dedicating so much time, effort, and hard work in taking these roles! Jason and I are proud to work with such a great and dedicated cast :)

To Grace, Marysha, and Seth: Thanks for making my life easier behind the scenes in getting the props, stage and sound together :)

For those who haven't seen the program for the show, click here to see the roles played by the cast members.

Friday, March 3, 2006

It's showtime tonight, but I'm confident that the cast'll step up and put on a good performace :)

In the meantime, check out this nifty video demo of this game called "Spore", where you basically follow the evolution of a species you create. The video is 35 minutes long, but definitely sit down and see how clever and "big" this game is...

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Slowly but surely, opening night for "That Day" is creeping up, but things are falling into place. Most of the actors and actresses have gotten their lines memorized, and Jason and I finally mananged to collect all the props for the entire show (which ranged from a wheelchair to glass shards to a fireman's helmet). The stage setup in progress, but should be ready by next week when we go through dress rehersals. Now, the tricky part now is that we won't be able to get use of the stage until opening night, but hopefully this won't affect the performance too much. The nice thing about the huge cast is that it helps out with the audience turnout, and from what I've been hearing from our actors and actresses inviting everyone and their dogs to the show, it looks like both shows may be pretty packed, which would be fantastic :)

The show will be digitally recorded, so if anyone wants a DVD of it, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do :P

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Over the weekend, I took a look at the Trackmania Nations demo, and I must say it's hella fun to play. The demo weighs in at around 240 megs or so, but it's free, filled with tons of tracks, and there's online play where you compete against other players to see who rules the clock. The graphics have a variety of adjustments, so even if you don't have the most uber system, you can probably find a way to make it run optimally. However, there have been concerns that the demo contains Starforce, which is some CD copy protection software that has been linked to damaging hardware, so just a fair warning before you install it.

Congrats to the 2006 Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers! Having grown up in PA, I was rooting for them all the way to the despise of my friends (who were Browns fans :P). Overall though, I'll say that this was probably one of the more sloppy Super Bowl games played, but the Steelers hung in there and gutted it out at the end. Thinking back about it, I think the Super Bowl was won a few key things.

1) Conversion on 3rd and 28: Roethlisberger managed to avoid several sack attempts as he tip-toed the line of scrimmage and threw 37 yards to an open Hines Ward near the 4 yard line. Roethlisberger later punches the ball in by a hair for the TD.

2) 75 yards: That was the distance Willie Parker ran for the Steeler's 2nd TD to start the 2nd half.

3) Antwaan Randle El: The Seahawks must have been falling asleep on this play, because when Randle El got the ball from Roethlisberger behind the line of scrimmage, any knowledgeable football fan knew the pass was coming (Randle El played QB for Indiana in his college days). Randle El threw the 43 yard strike to a wide open Hines Ward for the TD.

4) The Seahawk's offense was rolling along in the first half, but they had only a field goal to show for their efforts.

5) The officiating was terrible for the game! I had to feel for the Seahawks as they had a bunch of terrible penalties put on them, which probably demoralized them from coming back at the end of the game. A lot of my friend felt the referee's were pro-Steelers, and I really couldn't argue against them since all the bad penalties seemed to go the Seahawks way, while the Steelers seemed to get away with some holding penalties.

As for the commercials, they weren't great, but they weren't too bad. The one that my friends and I found the funniest was probably the Fed Ex commercial involving the cave men. You can see the rest of the commercials here.

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

A writer at Kotaku thought it would be a brilliant idea to have Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution run at the same time so he can attempt to sing and play "I Love Rock and Roll". I'll admit it's an interesting idea, but come on, he messing up on the easiest song on GH! :P I guess it goes to show that not everyone was born to sing and play music at the same time.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

I was sort of surprised to look down at my watch and see that it's the 31st already. But with research in the morning, play rehearsal 3 times a week in the evening, and various TA related stuff to do sprinkled in between, time does fly by quickly.

What's this play rehearsal you say? Well, my friend Jason had written up a monologue of 20+ characters based on (ficticious) characters who died in the September 11th attacks, and the play basically explores the attacks from various points of view. Jason asked me if I could help him be an assistant director for his play, and I figured it'll give me something else to think about during the day outside of research, so I took the role. And so far, I've been enjoying going through the past 2 weeks of practice with the actors and actresses reading through their monologues. Jason has done a good job with the casting of each character, so there wasn't much hand-holding involved to explain how each character should be portrayed. Since he wrote the play, I let Jason be the bigger critic while I supplement my thoughts here and there whenever appropriate, and so far all the actors and actresses have responded very well. Hopefully this'll lead up to a great performance when March rolls around!

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Friday, January 20, 2006

Thanks to Kabitizin and Velius for pointing out this interesting brainteaser. I got 15/33 (1-3, 7, 12, 18-19, 21, 23-25, 27, 29, 32), which apparently puts you into the "intelligent" category, but as Kabitizin said, this test is hardly a comprehensive test of your intelligence. Answers are posted on Kabitzin's site here.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

To give myself some other things to think about and not worry about research all the time, I volunteered to help my buddy Jason assist in his direction of a show that he and another friend co-wrote about the September 11 events. I'll be the first to say that I have absolutely no experience in such matters, but hey, I'll give it my best shot and hopefully be able to contribute.

Looks like the weather here in Columbus has decided to take a page out of Ithaca. This past Monday, the weather was sooo nice with clear skys and mid 50 temperatures. I wake up Wednesday morning, and there's SNOW on the ground! And the outlook for Thursday: 50 degree weather....

Saturday, January 7, 2006

One of the bigger attractions I haven't gotten around to seeing in Columbus was the COSI center, which has a lot of nifty science-type exhibitions and fun games to play around with. But thanks to the student activity fee all students play, OSU sponsored a free night for OSU students to go, so I couldn't pass this one up! Of course, what's a visit to COSI without some pictures :P

Monday, January 2, 2006

Despite the many miles I traveled over the holidays, it felt good to shut things down, take it easy, and enjoy the little things over the holiday break :) And yes, I did put 2000 miles on my mini-van traveling between NYC, NJ, PA, and Ohio. In NYC on the 24th, I caught up with my friend Kevin, and we went to see the huge Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. There also was this cool snowflake light pattern laid on the side of a building, and about every 20 minutes in the evening, the snowflakes would flicker to a song.

On the 27th, I caught up with more Cornell friends in NJ where Orca kindly offered her house to let us play games (Apples to Apples, Texas Hold'em, Taboo, and Guitar Hero) all day despite the remodeling her house is undergoing. Thanks Orca for the hospitality! ^_^

From the 29th till the 1st of the new year, I was down in Houston, Texas visiting Velius. It felt good to be outside in 70 degree weather in December, and Velius took me around several restaurants to get a taste of Texas. The best of the ones I went to was Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen, since I'm typically not a big fan of seafood, but this place made the best salmon I've probably ever had (and yes, it came on top of a wood plank that's used for flavor while baking). Also interesting to taste was fried alligator as an appetizer. To top it off was some delicious banana pudding in a jar you get to keep! Before I was down there, Velius and I were trash talking on who the real Guitar Hero was, but I went down and showed him :PBesides Guitar Hero, Velius and I comboed our way through X-Men 2 on the x-box with our unstoppable team of Iceman, Storm, Cyclops, and Nightcrawler. I also got to meet up with some of his Texas buddies as we all went bowling and played an interesting game called Mafia. My goal in bowling was to try and break 100, but I just ran out of time as our 2 hour limit on the lanes had just ended when I broke 90 on the 7th frame of the 3rd game -.- Ah well, considering it had been months since I last bowled, I guess I can't complain too much :P Thanks Velius for your hospitality! ^_^ We'll have to get Team =VGI= together sometime.